Mr. Speaker, this bill would implement last spring's budget bill, a budget that had its priorities for Canadians straight. It contains many technical amendments and some substantive matters such as building a much-needed new bridge at the Detroit River crossing. It is designed to facilitate growth, trade and innovation and to reduce red tape regulations that hold up innovation and growth. It is about the economy. It is about jobs. It also would facilitate select incentives for small and medium businesses, such as the EI tax credit of $1,000 a year for employers so they would hire more people.
The primary purpose of all our budget bills is to help grow our economy in a time of fragile international economic growth, without reaching into the bank accounts of Canadians or scooping more money from their pay cheques before they even see them, while balancing the budget.
Therefore, the formula is for growth for Canada, reducing debt that costs us millions of dollars in interest, with no tax increases and with no severe austerity measures like they have had to have in Europe.
Where is Canada's economy in relation to the world's? The World Economic Forum recently ranked Canada's financial system as the safest and soundest in the world for the fifth year in a row, making Canada the most secure place in the world to invest. We now hold the highest possible credit rating from the three principal credit rating agencies, saving us tens of millions of dollars in interest payments. We hold the best fiscal position in the G7. Forbes magazine recently proclaimed Canada the number one place in the world to do business. To prove all this is working for Canadian people, 820,000 new jobs have been created since 2009, a better record than the other G7 countries and even Germany. The jobs and growth act 2012 would further our successes.
Every country in Europe that is technically bankrupt or has been bailed out, like Portugal, Spain, Italy or Greece, would be thrilled to be able to do what our Prime Minister and Minister of Finance have done. These are countries that thought the gravy train would never stop, with governments that practised wilful blindness for decades and are now forced to implement huge cutbacks on services, where 25% to 50% of the young people are unemployed.
Unlike Greece, where people protest massive cutbacks and lack of job opportunities, we have students in Quebec protesting because the lowest tuition in Canada would rise by $325 a year and they want it free. That is quite a contrast and I think the irony escapes them.
However, here is another stark contrast. While Canada has announced phased-in changes to the old age supplement to ensure our auxiliary income supplement is on sound financial footing—changes that do not even start for 11 years and are phased in over 6 years—Portugal has been forced, by its own debt and interest charges, to raise the age for basic pensions for women from 60 to 65 overnight. Our national pension plan, the CPP, has no need to be changed at all. It is sound. Yet, the New Democrats' fearmongering is terrible among our most vulnerable citizens, misleading them that their pensions have been cut. The New Democrats have no shame.
The fundamental question for Canadians expressed in this bill is this. Do we want to plan our future on responsible, Conservative stewardship of our economy—for example, the old age supplement—or on the fearmongering comments of the NDP and claims made recently by its leader that, if elected in 2015, he would pull back the age at which seniors get their $500 a month to age 65. “Just vote for us and all will be well; we care about you,” he says.
However, this is exactly the way that most of Europe got itself into such massive trouble in recent years: decades of buying votes with borrowed money; acting as if they care more about people because they hand them more borrowed money, under the pretense that it is only the rich corporations that would pay for it, not consumers and not taxpayers. This government will never attempt to sneak in a massive increase in the cost of anything and everything, like a carbon tax on energy disguised as a cap and trade system.
I have a document here. It is the NDP costing program for the last campaign. On the front page, it says, “Giving your family a break”, and on the inside it says, “Be a part of it”; and the second-last line, where hardly anybody would look, says “Cap and Trade Revenues By Year” and it adds up to $21.5 billion.
